Maize, Genocide and Climate Change: A Cautionary Tale

By Bill Robinson

When Christopher Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492, it’s estimated that there were over 4000 varieties of maize, or corn, growing in North America.  Many of these varieties looked different from the corn we know today.  They were being grown across an immense spectrum of geography and climate.  The diversity and adaptability of maize was so great that it was equally productive in both Maine and southern Arizona — an unusual feat for a single edible plant species.

Unfortunately, less than a quarter of those estimated 4000 indigenous varieties of maize remain today, and the reason has nothing to do with climate change. The significant loss of maize varieties and genetic diversity is tragically tied to what happened to Native American people at the hands of the European invaders and their descendants. 

European colonists sought to appropriate the land, waters, and resources of the people who had stewarded those assets for at least 10,000 years. The colonists soon realized that the most efficient way to displace (or destroy) the indigenous people was to steal or destroy their food supply. No group of people, no matter how large and culturally complex, they reasoned, could have a legitimate claim to land sovereignty if they could not feed themselves. 

But how to justify such appropriations and tactics?  The colonists turned to a series of papal decrees written between 1452 and 1493, collectively referred to as “The Doctrine of Discovery.”  These decrees stated that all newly discovered lands and the heathens inhabiting them belonged to the European “Christian” nation that first “discovered” them.  All goods and property belonged to the invaders, and the pre-existing inhabitants were to be reduced to “perpetual slavery.”  This doctrine was codified in the United States and Canada, giving free rein to white European settlers, their descendants, and their governments to perpetrate cruel injustices against those who had lived in and cared for this land for thousands of years. 

Food destruction became an effective weapon.  In the late 17th century, the Governor General of New France ordered the capture and enslavement of all 50 elected leaders of the Iroquois Confederacy and the burning of the entire 1687 crop of Seneca maize—1.2 million bushels of stored and standing maize.  In 1779, General George Washington issued orders to General John Sullivan of the Continental Army to destroy the ancient Iroquois Confederation, writing “It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more…, with instructions to do it in the most effectual manner….”  Even here in Arizona bitterness remains in the Navajo Nation from Kit Carson’s destruction of the Navajo cornfields, peach orchards and livestock, a campaign that lead directly to the infamous “long march.”

An unanticipated consequence of food destruction is a commensurate loss of genetic diversity.  And this is where climate change comes into the story.  When genetic diversity of a species is low, its adaptability is also low.  Greater genetic diversity allows for increased evolutionary changes that allow a species to adapt to changes in its environment.  As climate change rapidly begins to change habitats, species’ survival will undoubtedly be determined by their adaptability.  Should significant crop species be unable to quickly adapt to environmental shifts, our future could include widespread food shortages that will likely affect poorer countries and populations disproportionately, perhaps resulting in unprecedented global death tolls.

Maize isn’t unique in having lost its historical genetic diversity.  Most agricultural crop varieties are now bred for high yields in monoculture conditions (growing single species).  While these varieties excel in the narrow conditions they’re bred for, they aren’t always widely adaptable and may no longer have a wild relative to be bred with to increase their adaptability.  While we humans have been changing our climate, we may also have been breeding our food sources away from the adaptability to climate change we’ll need.

It’s a pretty grim picture, especially for Native peoples who have experienced centuries of food destruction. But within the Episcopal Church there are those who are providing new hope. Two of our churches in this diocese, St. Andrews, Sedona and Transfiguration, Mesa, are actively working to restore traditional indigenous seed crops, and Transfiguration works with four other growers to magnify that effort. As a result, commercial quantities of rare and ancient seeds have been made available to Native tribes and communities in five southwestern states, and two varieties of maize that have been on the endangered list (Yoeme Blue and Supai Red Chinmark) are making a noticeable comeback.  Perhaps this is the beginning of the road to reclaiming genetic diversity in crop species more widely, and increasing crop resilience and adaptability for future generations.

¹National Archives, Washington, D.C. (GW to Sullivan/Clinton: 5-31, 1779).

Bill Robinson is the manager of the Crazy Chile Farm at Church of the Transfiguration in Mesa and is a member of both the diocesan Creation Care Council and the diocesan Council for Native American Ministry.